Around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, all the trains on line 1 froze. Ilévia evokes “a computer problem with the new autopilot server”. Traffic was able to partially resume, from 10:10 a.m., except on the central portion of the line, between République-Beaux Arts and Villeneuve d’Ascq-Hôtel de Ville stations. The line was fully restored at 12 p.m. This failure of the autopilot caused all the trains to be locked, which means that the doors lock, even when stopped at a station. “Its delivery is conditional on human verification going as far as inspection of the tracks by agentsexplains in a press release the transport network of the Lille metropolis. A necessary approach to guarantee the safety of travelers and ilévia teams”. Trains, blocked in the tunnels, were towed.
“We want to go too fast”
“People were annoyed, they pulled on the evacuation handles, says Abdelmajid El Haouzi, CGT union delegate at Ilévia. It’s a total frustration, anguish. They even used tunnels, finding themselves faced with colleagues totally deprived of means and information because it happened suddenly.”
Clearly, the life of this new metro automatic pilot is not a long, quiet river. Its entry into service was initially planned for 2016 but Alstom, the railway manufacturer, started from scratch to design this technology which it is struggling to master and which must equip new new trainsets extended to 52 meters, compared to the current 26m length. The group has already paid heavy late penalties to Mel (European metropolis of Lille): 53 million euros. Since November, this automatic pilot has been deployed on all trains and stations on line 1. “We want to go too fastassures Abdelmajid El Haouzi. We want to put in place a system that is not quite ready. There was feedback during dry tests, we noticed that there were anomalies but we still put this system in place despite daily breakdowns, blocked doors and enormous passenger flows to manage! We are clearly insecure, both on the part of users and staff. We can end up with crowd movements, people being trampled and seriously injured.”
Stéphane Barbereau
La Mel singled out
Another CGT union representative questions the choices of the metropolis: “MEL absolutely wants this system to be put into service as quickly as possible, so the dry run is done with the users”. Daily travelers who use the metro become guinea pigs of sorts. “This new system is put into service prematurely and this is the result”denounces this unionist who assures that there is a lack of training for agents at the command post to be able to manage breakdowns as quickly as possible. The CGT is asking for more prevention agents to guide travelers in the event of a breakdown and the return of dry runs, without users on board, even if this could lead to inconveniences such as the temporary closure of the metro certain evenings or weekends.
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